Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Lois Lane, You're Kinda Dumb!

You know, Lois, this cover kind of says it all. I mean, barring any BS explanations about "Super-hypnotism" or some such rubbish, you really aren't very observant. Aren't you a reporter?

Seriously, Lois, how can you idolize Superman and ridicule Clark Kent for being average and wimpy? Even with the glasses and the suit and tie, no amount of mild manners could hide the fact that your closest co-worker is built like a brick $#!+house.

And you know all those coincidences? The ones where Clark vanishes just as Superman turns up? The ones where Superman is dying of Kryptonite poisoning and Clark calls off work because he's upset? They're NOT coincidences! I don't care what Bruce Wayne said. I don't care that you saw Superman out your window while Clark was having dinner at your place. Clark Kent IS Superman!

13 comments:

PJ: Well, counting only the number of times Lois has been married and/or engaged on the COVER of her OWN comic, I get 15... I'm sure the actual number is much higher if I were to examine all the issues of Superman and Acrion Comics... but that a LOT of comics.

OK, so Lois of the silver age wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but does Supe have to be such a smarmy shit about it? I mean, jeez, man of steel, Lois' major crime here was she believed you, you pampas ass! And while we're on the subject of low bulb wattage, exactly how many times has Luther lured you into yet another trap with kryptonite? (dumb ass)

1) That marvelous moment where Christopher Reeves' (dressed as Clark Kent) chest expands and seemlingly grows five centimeters and his voice drops an octave...to abruptly change his mind and DEFLATES to slouching, nasal, insecure Clark. Ever since then, I've felt...it ain't so implausible a disguise.

2) When Lois and Lana make a pro and con list of "Clark is Superman" and "Clark isn't Superman", it has to be close to 50-50. For every suspcious moment when Clark ducks out and Superman appears, there is the incident where some robot, some JLA chum, some fortuitous random alien, some quirky Red K exposure has definitively proven that Clark simply cannot be Superman. Back and forth, forth and back. I'm not surprised if they act a little squirrely.

IIRC, the story inside had almost nothing to do with the cover. It might have been a dream sequence. But I agree with Mykal's point; how does Superman give them crap about not spotting him as Clark Kent without some acknowledgment of his own stupidity in constantly giving Lois, or Lana, or Jimmy, some space jewel or flower that turns them evil?

Anonymous: I've tried to look it up, but I don't have a copy of this issue and can't get into my usual free comics site. :P

Blaze: 1. Chris Reeves' acting chops aside, Lois spends a ridiculous amount of time with both Supes and Clark.

2. Superman's reputation as an honest man is way over-blown. The fabulous web of lies that guy has spun over the years is positively shameful!

Neill: In Weisinger's defense, his target audience had an average age of 13.

Pat: In Superman's defense, you can't leave ANYTHING around the office that Jimmy won't touch, eat, lick or insert! That kid is worse than my toddler! Perry White should have the Planet offices child-proofed.

In defense of Silver Age Lois: She tried several times to prove Clark was Superman. She knew and he actually had to built robots that looked like him to throw her off. This comics dude said it best.

Unfortunately for her, what people have apparently somehow taken away from this era is the half a panel at the end of all of these stories where Lois goes “hmn, maybe Clark isn’t Superman,” and not the fact that those panels come on the heels of an entire issue of Superman working his ass off to try to convince her of that, which he doesn’t even manage to make stick until the next month. Which is completely ridiculous.

It’s like saying Luthor’s not dangerous or not a threat because Superman always beats him. Of course he never wins, he’s fighting Superman.

Of course Lois never catches Superman in his secret identity, he’s freaking Superman. But it’s seriously goddamned impressive and the mark of a goddamned genius that she’s able to so consistently try, and so consistently force him to work for it.

Har har, Lois Lane was friends with Clark Kent and in love with Superman and couldn’t tell they were the same guy, what an idiot, right?

But it’s also ridiculously, patently, absurdly untrue and any actual comic fan who says this in my presence immediately loses a big chunk of credibility, especially if they’ve actually read any Superman.

I mean, I can kind of see where the wider concept comes from. It seems pretty clear that this idea, this insult to Lois, is a product of the Silver Age of Superman writing.

The problem for Lois wasn’t that she didn’t see through Clark. It was that, eventually, once the Silver Age rolled around, she did.

As comics moved from the Golden Age to the Silver Age, the Superman comics changed a lot. The supporting cast got fleshed out and a couple of them got titles of their own. Lois and Jimmy Olsen and Perry White became major characters, and Superman became absurdly powerful. This is important to understand – Silver Age Superman wasn’t just bullet-locomotive-tall-buildings In fact basically any skill or ability a human being might have, he could do perfectly just by claiming it as a power and putting “super-” in front of it.

And he was a genius – his brain was every bit as absurd and accelerated as the rest of him. If he needed to time-travel and didn’t feel like flying through the time barrier, he could just invent a time machine, and build it himself from the ground up. At some point relatively early on he even built himself an army of Superman robots that looked, thought, and behaved just like him.

And between his hearing and his vision and his total lack of respect for anybody’s privacy, it’s near impossible to surprise him, which makes tricking him into revealing himself, well, a full-time job.

And Lois took that job. See, here’s the truth about Lois – she knew. She was, in fact, the only one who actually did see through the glasses. Perry White didn’t see it. Blind as a bat, that guy. Jimmy Olsen? Superman’s bestest pal in the whole world, who even got a signal watch that he could use to harass call Superman for help whenever he needed, who looked up to Clark in the office? Didn’t have the first clue. Lex Luthor, smartest man in the world, Superman’s boyhood friend? No idea in the least.

But Lois – Lois got it. Lois had a reporter’s instinct and a brain in her head, and she looked at Clark and said “that guy is totally Superman.”

And like a good reporter, she set out to prove it. She would try to get him to get a haircut (no scissors could cut the Hair of Steel), or surreptitiously carry a bit of kryptonite through the office to see if he got all pale and sweaty, or obligate him to show up somewhere as Clark during an event she knew Superman would appear at.

And Superman, because he was freaking Superman, and could do absolutely anything he had or wanted to, would figure out some way to stymie her efforts and clearly demonstrate that Clark and Superman weren’t the same man. Elegant, flawless, exceptional proof.

And Lois wasn’t fooled, and would come back a month later trying something new, because she knew about the robots and the superpowers and that someone like Superman would be perfectly capable of faking all the proofs and demonstrations that he faked.

No matter how smart and twisted and arcane Superman got, no matter to what lengths he went to protect himself, Lois was still smart enough to figure out “well, he could have done this and this with those powers and these resources to make it look like I was wrong, so he still might be Clark.”

So, Lois is a genius. She’s the one person who actually does see through the glasses, and realizes Clark Kent and Superman are the same person. She’s a serious challenge to Superman, a threat on the level of Luthor or Brainiac, and he has to fight just as hard to keep her off his trail as he does to keep them in prison. She’s the only person he knows who’s not evil who’s anything like his equal, which is appropriate in a love interest.

Har har, Lois Lane was friends with Clark Kent and in love with Superman and couldn’t tell they were the same guy, what an idiot, right?

But it’s also ridiculously, patently, absurdly untrue and any actual comic fan who says this in my presence immediately loses a big chunk of credibility, especially if they’ve actually read any Superman.

I mean, I can kind of see where the wider concept comes from. It seems pretty clear that this idea, this insult to Lois, is a product of the Silver Age of Superman writing.

The problem for Lois wasn’t that she didn’t see through Clark. It was that, eventually, once the Silver Age rolled around, she did.

As comics moved from the Golden Age to the Silver Age, the Superman comics changed a lot. The supporting cast got fleshed out and a couple of them got titles of their own. Lois and Jimmy Olsen and Perry White became major characters, and Superman became absurdly powerful. This is important to understand – Silver Age Superman wasn’t just bullet-locomotive-tall-buildings In fact basically any skill or ability a human being might have, he could do perfectly just by claiming it as a power and putting “super-” in front of it.

And he was a genius – his brain was every bit as absurd and accelerated as the rest of him. If he needed to time-travel and didn’t feel like flying through the time barrier, he could just invent a time machine, and build it himself from the ground up. At some point relatively early on he even built himself an army of Superman robots that looked, thought, and behaved just like him.

And between his hearing and his vision and his total lack of respect for anybody’s privacy, it’s near impossible to surprise him, which makes tricking him into revealing himself, well, a full-time job.

And Lois took that job. See, here’s the truth about Lois – she knew. She was, in fact, the only one who actually did see through the glasses. Perry White didn’t see it. Blind as a bat, that guy. Jimmy Olsen? Superman’s bestest pal in the whole world, who even got a signal watch that he could use to harass call Superman for help whenever he needed, who looked up to Clark in the office? Didn’t have the first clue. Lex Luthor, smartest man in the world, Superman’s boyhood friend? No idea in the least.

But Lois – Lois got it. Lois had a reporter’s instinct and a brain in her head, and she looked at Clark and said “that guy is totally Superman.”

And like a good reporter, she set out to prove it. She would try to get him to get a haircut (no scissors could cut the Hair of Steel), or surreptitiously carry a bit of kryptonite through the office to see if he got all pale and sweaty, or obligate him to show up somewhere as Clark during an event she knew Superman would appear at.

And Superman, because he was freaking Superman, and could do absolutely anything he had or wanted to, would figure out some way to stymie her efforts and clearly demonstrate that Clark and Superman weren’t the same man. Elegant, flawless, exceptional proof.

And Lois wasn’t fooled, and would come back a month later trying something new, because she knew about the robots and the superpowers and that someone like Superman would be perfectly capable of faking all the proofs and demonstrations that he faked.

No matter how smart and twisted and arcane Superman got, no matter to what lengths he went to protect himself, Lois was still smart enough to figure out “well, he could have done this and this with those powers and these resources to make it look like I was wrong, so he still might be Clark.”

So, Lois is a genius. She’s the one person who actually does see through the glasses, and realizes Clark Kent and Superman are the same person. She’s a serious challenge to Superman, a threat on the level of Luthor or Brainiac, and he has to fight just as hard to keep her off his trail as he does to keep them in prison. She’s the only person he knows who’s not evil who’s anything like his equal, which is appropriate in a love interest.

Why The Silver Age?

I grew up in the late 70's and early 80's, right as superhero comics were going from a floundering social rant about human rights to a newly reinvented vision of your favorite heroes as masked psychopaths. Fortunately for me, my local library had a copy of "Batman from the 30's to the 70's" which I checked out and read regularly. I was hooked. I was filled with what Alan Moore would later call a "sense of wonder" at the elaborate interior of the Batcave. The supporting cast with room for a Batgirl, Batwoman, Bathound and Bat-Mite. Oh, sure, I joined the 1985 bandwagon of "Dark Knight Returns" and "Watchmen" style grittiness... but after a few years of that stuff, I began to miss, sincerely, characters like Streaky the Super-cat and Mr. Mxyzptlk. In a few more years, I began to really miss Aquaman's shirt (oh, and his hand). No, for me, superheroes will always exist in a shimmering land written before 1967.

Oh! And the images, indicia, titles, names. etc. of any comics or cartoon properties are copyright their respective owners.